10 states in dark as Northern-Eastern grid fails again

New Delhi, Jul 31: North India plunged to darkness when the Northern and Eastern grid collapsed again, the second time in the last two days. The power outage was experienced across 10 north Indian and eastern states including West Bengal, Bihar, Orissa and Jharkhand. According to Power Ministry officials, the matter will take 5-6 hours to be rectified.

Metro and train services came to a grinding halt with as many as 75 trains getting affected and the busy Delhi metro services halted. The grid failure occurred at 1:07 pm on Tuesday.

A panic situation has surfaced especially in hospitals with most government hospitals relying on in-house power back-up to carry out operations. The concern seems to be that the emergency sections and operation theater cannot carry on for long with the in-house back up. Other big hospitals like Safdarjung and AIIMS are seeking hydel power from Bhutan to help deal with outage.

Northern power grid transmits about 35,000 MW power and with this major power outage, the states of Punjab, Rajasthan, Delhi, Jharkhand, Jammu and Kashmir, Himachal Pradesh have to deal with this crisis.

Meanwhile, there are reports that 100 Megawatt of emergency power is being given to VVIP areas in Delhi.

According to the CPRO Northern Railways, around 100 trains have been affected. Worst affected sections include the Ambala-Palwal and the Ghaziabad-Mugalsarai sections. The Delhi Metro Rail Corporation (DMRC) officials have been quoted as saying that all passengers have been evacuated from all metro stations and have been refunded.

OneIndia News